Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  In front of a station are parked cars, a black Citroën DS 19, a Juva 4, not quite to the same scale as the rest, one of the men fiddles with a whistle which mimics the sound of a real steam whistle, you bend down to get a trackside view of a train coming towards you, you close your eyes, the sound of the rails, it’s time.

  You return to the surface, back in the station you walk to the end of your platform to stare up at the flanged smoke-shield mounted on top of the enormous metal cylinder which in turn reigns over a world of wheels, push-rods, fly-cranks, oscillating cams and injectors, the Mountain 241 which will haul your train at 120 kilometres an hour, a 241 P, double funnels, two new mechanical 18/24-stroke lubricators, you can’t see the lubricators, they’re on the left foot-plate, on the other side of the locomotive, what you’re seeing is the right side and, bolted to the foot-plate, the large turbo-dynamo which looks small against the body of the boiler and the four drive-wheels each of which has a diameter of two metres, a superb dark green has been used for the combined engine and tender, darker than olive green, with red stripes running along the entire length.

  So, a journey by day, with the pleasure of observing the landscape change as you travel across eastern France, the steeples which will grow more bulbous as the train rolls nearer to the mountains that are the heart of Europe, the pleasure of seeing yourself pass through towns without stopping, alone in one of those empty compartments where you can be yourself, such a delight, alone with yourself, with the current number of the review La Nouvelle Pensée and a popular magazine which has the latest news about the love life of some film actress and a light opera star, you took the liberty of buying this rag in the station, you swore you’d leave it behind on the train when you arrived, wanting to leave the Party doesn’t mean that you have suddenly to acquire capitalist tastes, you’ll throw the magazine away just as you’ll throw your review away before going through customs, no need to draw attention to your political affiliations even if they are in the process of changing, yes, but where can you throw it away? in the toilets? A communist review abandoned just before the customs check would look even more suspicious, the toilet of another coach then? In second class?

  Pretend to be going to the restaurant car and leave the review in a toilet in second class, or an empty compartment, you can leave the rag in your own compartment, keep one page, the one all about the camera of your dreams, the Paillard 8 mm with two Berthiot lenses, a focal length of 12/5 and one of 35, expensive, 73,000, francs, light, elegant, black-and-steel finish, very expensive.

  A classical music record costs 2,600 francs, Schubert’s Winter Journey sung by Fischer-Dieskau, for example, so ten times the price of the Schubert makes 26,000, so 73,000 is practically thirty classical records, three sixes are eighteen, three twos are six plus one makes seven, 78,000, take away two records, that makes twenty-eight records, in other words I can’t buy records for two years if I want the Paillard with two lenses, that’s not counting the cost of film, there are cheaper labels than Pathé-Marconi, that’s further on, on the Phillips page, their ‘Classics for Everyone’, less than 2,000 francs a throw, true, but you’ve got to add local taxes, what’s the local tax rate on records? And Phillips doesn’t do the Winter Journey, nor the Brahms with Heifetz. How many packets of cigarettes make one Paillard?

  Anyway, just go ahead and buy the Pathé-Marconi Schubert, the Winter Journey, I’m told the man singing it is fantastic, try with cigarettes, a hundred and thirty francs for a packet of Rallye, a hundred and sixty if you smoke Camels, they don’t like Camels in the Party, but if I leave the Party I could smoke nothing but Camels, so if I gave up cigarettes, a hundred packets of Camel come to sixteen thousand francs, ‘Camels, no other cigarette is so easy on the throat, regular smokers prefer Camels’, a whole year of smoking Camels is sixteen times three hundred and sixty-five, hold on, it’s more than a packet a day, what’s a regular smoker? ‘I’m a regular smoker, I prefer Camels, one packet, two, three packets, makes no difference, Camels do not irritate the throat’, so let’s say a packet and a half a day, just to keep the advertisers happy, it comes to more than five hundred packets.

  Give or take it’s eighteen months’ smoking for a camera, but meanwhile I go on buying gramophone records, I’m wrong, it’s less than a year of smoking, just four hundred packets, that would make four times six twenty-four, four and carry two, four times one, plus two, six, sixty-four plus the three zeros, that’s already sixty-four thousand with four hundred packets, got to be accurate, in my head seventy-three thousand multiplied by a hundred and sixty, no, in seventy-three thousand how many hundred and sixties are there? No, sixty-four thousand buys four hundred packets, for five hundred packets it would cost another sixteen thousand, total eighty thousand, that makes the Paillard the equivalent of about four hundred and sixty packets, a year’s smoking, if I’m careful.

  I must brush up on my mental arithmetic, hello, we’re off, something like a thousand kilometres to go, I’ve never been further than Mulhouse, no, another five minutes, it’s that other train that’s going, I always make that mistake, it’s because I want to be off, the cigarettes, the camera, the reflection in the window, I’m twenty-seven, the face of the ballerina on a page of the magazine, she’s the same age as me, she’s made up as an old woman in a wig and a shawl, she scrambles through the barbed wire, Budapest is finished, she’s leaving, I don’t give a damn about the cardinal hidden in the Yankee Embassy, but the ballerina, and the University Hospital in Budapest, bottom right of the photo, a head, on the floor, a room in the hospital attacked by cannon, fired by Soviet tanks, the corpses of four patients, in a meeting of my cell I’d have said it was a fake photo got up for propaganda purposes, but Hatzfeld said have no illusions, almost everything they say is true, you just have to turn the pages.

  In another photo it was Stalin’s head that was on the ground, next to an advert for Vick’s VapoRub, to be applied as a poultice on the chest at night the minute the infant sneezes, in Humanité it was a photo of a militia man at the headquarters of the Hungarian Communist Party, he was lying full length on the ground, a picture of Lenin placed on his stomach and a bayonet stuck clean through his throat, was the poultice mummy used to put on my chest Vick’s VapoRub? It smelled of camphor and mint, that plus a soupspoonful of Rami linctus and I was ready for the night, I used to shut my eyes feeling slightly sick, it was better to be sleepy, read White Fang on the QT by my bedside lamp with a poultice on my chest and the aftertaste of Rami in my mouth, which spoiled everything.

  The Poles present Gomulka with a teddy bear to thank him for standing up to the Russians, the bear is enormous, it’s in the station at Warsaw, a two-page spread, you try to look at the hands in the photos of Gomulka, Hatzfeld told you that, in prison in Stalin’s day he had his fingernails torn out, can’t really see for sure, this time the Poles come off better than the Hungarians, and then this pretty woman enters the compartment, a porter stows away her luggage, the pretty woman has no change, she searches through her bag marked H, comes up with nothing, she is wearing two delicate gold bracelets, the porter scowls, waits, he’ll miss his next job.

  You watch the little drama, the pretty woman’s eyes are on you but she isn’t looking at you, she is tall, under her coat a red dress, cut at the neck in an austere V, she doesn’t want anything from you, you exist so minimally, but you are there, this she knows, had enough of this, you give the porter the coin, he goes without a word, he thought he might get more than the standard charge, your face feels hot, the woman thanks you with an irritated nod, pointed chin, broad forehead, she’s taller than you, brunette, frankly she is not really happy about the way you interfered.

  You sit down again, without speaking, don’t exploit the situation, in any case you don’t know how to, the train sets off, you are sitting in a corner seat next to the window facing the engine, it has not crossed your mind to offer your seat to the pretty woman, she has settled down on the same side as you but at the other end, next to the door, she c
an’t see you now, a hundred thousand refugees have fled into Austria, you see people walking through the streets carrying loaves of bread, the woman has not yet taken her gloves off, she stands to retrieve one of her cases from the rack, you leap up to help, a ‘thank you’ in a discouraging voice, you’ve sat down again, she removes her purse from her case, closes the case, takes it by the handle, you leap up again, you put the case back on the luggage rack.

  Again you are sitting, you stare out of the window, you are leaning forward, head turned towards the window and the landscape, tracking the houses the train has just passed. And in the window, the reflection of your head is also leaning forward, now you can see the reflection of the woman’s face, her profile, it is rare for a woman to have such a beautiful profile, the prettier the girl the more like a grouper-fish she looks, it was a Breton friend who told you that about girls who don’t respond, the woman has a large brow, a straight nose, as much chin as is necessary, you tell yourself it’s like a profile on a medal, ‘Monsieur,’ the woman is speaking to you, she’s not looking at you, she’s searching through her purse, she takes out a coin, ‘Monsieur,’ now she’s looking at you, she holds out the coin, you refuse it, ‘Please’, her voice is crisp, ‘I insist,’ you take the coin, she thanks you once more, her tone is not sharp now, it is cold, you say, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender…’

  She says nothing, your smile is frozen on your lips, you feel foolish, you slip the coin into your jacket pocket, the left one, you hold the coin briefly between your fingers in your pocket, you stroke it, you look out of the window, you take your left hand out of your pocket, elbow on arm-rest, hand held up to your mouth, index-finger on your upper lip, a lingering smell of perfume on your finger, sweet, heavy, the woman must perfume her gloves, at moments it seems as if the perfume is coming from her whole person, it fights with the smell of the compartment, a mixture of smoke, polish and SNCF disinfectant, you look at her, she is reading, her legs are long.

  Your hand returns to your pocket seeking the coin, you warm it between the ends of your fingers as you look at the woman’s legs, you decide you are going to say something to her, being suave is not that difficult, you’re a Parisian male and she’s a middle-class lady up from the country who is going home, she’ll be the one to say something first, you’ll get to know her better, she’ll invite you to her château, you’ll go for long walks together, you won’t be allowed to touch her, you’ll chance your luck some evening, she’ll grab a horse-whip, a stony look in her eye, she wants you naked but you mustn’t move, big four-poster, chintz bed-curtains patterned with red flowers, outside the country speeds by, you fidget in your seat and hardly see anything of the landscape which you’d been looking forward to seeing.

  You take the coin out, smuggled in your hand, it’s warm now, you hold it against your left cheek, bring it nearer to your nose, you try to rediscover the perfume on the coin, a trace, what was the name of your mother’s perfume? it was by Guerlain but what was it called? you shouldn’t have held the coin against your cheek, now it’s been tainted by the smell of this morning’s shaving soap, the perfume might well be by Guerlain, but mixed up with the smell of your shaving soap the result is not very pleasant, you try to discover a trace of it on the end of your finger and in the air of the compartment.

  You watch the reflection of the woman’s profile in the window where fields, woods and villages flash by, you have crossed your legs, your magazine is open on your knees, that’s not quite accurate, actually it’s your thighs, but the word thigh is indecent, does the woman spray perfume on her thighs after she gets out of the bath? you’re strolling with her in the country, it’s early evening, you are returning from your walk, there’s a whole group of you now moving across hill and dale, sometimes a wisp of mist fifty centimetres above the ground, you walk through it, the woman has caught you up and is walking next to you, she has taken you by the hand, Gilberte, Catherine and Micheline are there, they show off their petticoats, the elegant, sober ‘Emo’ model, Gilberte’s is made of run-proof Bemberg rayon, which is gathered nylon over lace, Micheline’s, priced three and a half thousand francs, is virtually a nightdress, Empire neckline and the skirt flounced with a lace insertion, two pages further on is the ‘Boccaccio’, a short nightie, with a round neck and short sleeves puffed with coloured smocking, and the ‘Esmeralda’, a very youthful style and impeccably cut, youthful, impeccable, the words don’t mean a thing, pointless as adjectives, you can get a better idea of the ‘Boccaccio’ but I don’t know what smocking is.

  Why not just ask the woman in the red dress what it is, in a moment, as a conversation starter? meanwhile you turn to the next page and you’re bare-chested having just completed a month of the ‘Dynam’ method, a course of psychophysical culture which turns you into a real athlete, ‘think about muscles and Dynam will see you get them, work out in front of your mirror for just fifteen minutes a day – no cheating! – for the length of the course and the end results are amazing, thighs gain five centimetres on average!’ You look out again at the landscape, no, the grounds of the château, you’re strolling down a walkway shaded by heavy grape vines and reach a garden that has run wild.

  A profusion of parasitic weeds, a few pale rose trees well spaced out, the silhouettes of women, bushes laden with fruit around a stagnant pond, you see specific things, peaches fat and dark, a wall covered with mauve flowers, the warm evening and Clara d’Ellébeuse, a flight of rooks, the splash of an otter by the water’s edge in the blue light, a few patches of golden yellow among the leaves, the woman is alone now, she is walking just ahead of you, she turns, her arms are very soft, a forest slides past in the window, you have the feeling that you’ve been asleep, you have been asleep, the woman in red is still there, indifferent.

  You lay aside your copy of Paris-Match, if you have indeed been asleep you should be able to cope with La Nouvelle Pensée, it’s your review, you’re still a member of the editorial board, three weeks ago you were busy deciding the contents of the issue you now have in your hand, with your comrades, under the chairmanship, exceptionally, of a deputy member of the Politburo. It was bizarre, having a member of the Politburo there, a deputy member but from the Politburo, though not that bizarre in the circumstances, Warsaw, Budapest, these were bumpy times.

  But the fascist attacks on the Party’s offices in Paris had closed up the ranks, and then there was Suez – and in the presence of a member of the Politburo no one had dared question the Party line, all the more so since, at the start of the meeting, the deputy member of the politburo had come out with two or three sentences astoundingly critical of Rakosi and the former Hungarian leadership, very trenchant sentences which went much further than anything the most outspoken comrade would have uttered on the subject.

  Then they’d come to the business of settling the contents of the next issue, a discussion about a piece roughly ten pages or so long, a short story submitted by a bourgeois writer, it’s entitled ‘The Rehearsal’, the author is a foreigner, a German social-democrat, a Big Name in European literature as they say, Hans Kappler, a harmless enough tale, Kappler tries above all to achieve transparency, he explains everything, the love of a singer and a pianist, people with no worries beyond the accuracy of a note or the state of their feelings for each other, it was the opposite of what was required by the class struggle and socialist realism, a story of zero originality which nevertheless you’d liked and take great pleasure in rejecting.

  It seemed bizarre to you that the Politburo should be so interested in the review, so interested that it had sent one of its members, a deputy member maybe but even so, to the last meeting of its editorial board, after all it’s only a highbrow review read in intellectual circles, the comrade member of the Politburo had wanted to attend ‘a noholds barred meeting’ of ‘real’ intellectuals who were ‘aware of their historical task’.

  As to Kappler’s piece, some views had been very critical, others less so, you are the youngest member of the board, you were the
most forthright, no doubt you were the one who liked the story best, you found it insubstantial but well-written and you were its toughest critic, as literature it was demotivating, its prose was fake-prole, the transparency was entirely bourgeois, Kappler almost made you forgive Proust, a comrade took up cudgels for Proust snobbish he might be but he understands feelings, besides he’s very critical of upper-bourgeois values, much more so than Kappler, do reread Time Regained, the same comrade also defended the story, a weak defence, he was all at sea, he always backed the Party’s political position one hundred and ten per cent, but he gave himself space on questions of culture.

  But that day, with the comrade from the Politburo taking his time before saying anything on the subject, he wasn’t sure which way to jump, the discussion covered socialist humanism, reality, and false consciousness, you took delight in destroying something you liked in the presence of a deputy member of the Politburo, but it wasn’t important now since in all likelihood you’ll soon be leaving the Party, yes, you could have defended ‘The Rehearsal’ but it reminded you too strongly of the sort of thing your family liked both before and during the war, books that were well-written, genteel literature, you criticised without believing in what you were saying because you have also stopped believing in the things you love.

  At the same time you revelled in your ability to lie joyfully and effectively as you set about destroying a piece of writing which took you back to the age of eighteen, and your comrades as they listened refused to be outdone, when a few of you got together you found you had the same ideas, the same eclectic tastes for bourgeois authors, but with this editorial board you felt as if you were part of some ceremony in which each member of the tribe brings his richest possession and proudly casts it into the flames in front of everyone else, the member of the Politburo nodded his head with great understanding and kindliness, when he spoke he did so hesitantly, especially during the general discussion which opened the proceedings.